To his right, Narin kicked an orc's leg out and it slammed down on its chin before sailing off the cliff. To his left, Thorgig jumped back from a cleaver slash and tripped over the corpse of a dead orc behind him. He fell flat on his back on the ice and started sliding headfirst for the precipice.

"Thorgig!" roared Kagrin, and stepped forwards, only to slip himself. He clutched at a boulder as he watched his friend spin towards the void.

Thorgig recovered at the last second, and slashed down with his long-axe. The hooked heel of the head bit into the ice and held. He swung to a stop, holding one-handed onto the very end of his axe-haft with his feet dangling off the edge.

Thorgig's orc swung at Kagrin, still clinging to the boulder. It swung. The young goldsmith pushed away, and the orc's axe struck sparks off the rock. Kagrin gashed it behind the knee with his handaxe and its leg buckled. It fell on its side, grunting, and slid, twisting and flailing, across the ice, coming perilously close to dislodging Thorgig as it flew off the edge.

"Hold fast, Thorgig!" called Kagrin, tearing into his pack and pulling out his climbing rope. He began lashing one end around the boulder, but another orc had noticed him and was coming around the fight towards him. Kagrin dropped the rope and stood.

Felix pulled himself to his feet and started for Kagrin, but his ankle gave out and he nearly fell again. He would never reach him in time. He looked around him desperately. Kagrin blocked a brutal blow with his hand-axe and was smashed to the ground, dazed.

A severed orc head lay behind Gotrek. Felix snatched it by its topknot and turned in a circle. The gruesome thing was amazingly heavy — all skull, no brain, no doubt. His ankle and knee blazed with pain as he spun.

"Hoy!" he shouted, letting go. "Ugly!"

The orc looked up just in time to take the head of its comrade full in the face. It wasn't a hard blow, but it distracted it long enough for Kagrin to stagger up and bury his axe blade in the thing's gut. The orc stepped back, surprised, and its paunch ripped open, its entrails spilling out of the wound and slapping wetly on the ice. It slipped on them and crashed down into the snow. Kagrin stood and chopped it through the neck. It spasmed and died. Kagrin threw down the axe and turned back to his rope.

Felix limped forwards to defend Kagrin while he uncoiled the rope, but as he looked around he saw there was no need. The battle was over. The other dwarfs stood panting over their kills, the snow all around them stained with blood, both red and black. Gotrek climbed out of a circle of dead orcs and rubbed the blade of his axe with a handful of snow. Leather-beard had a long gash across his bare chest, but his was the gravest wound. The rest had only nicks and bruises.

Kagrin tossed the end of his rope towards Thorgig.

The other dwarfs turned.

"Careful, lad," said Narin. "No sudden moves."

"That's why a dwarf always carries an axe, not a sword," said Sketti, looking disapprovingly at Felix's longsword. "A sword wouldn't have stopped you."

Thorgig reached out gingerly with his free hand and felt for the rope beside him. He found it at last and gripped it tight.

"Don't try to climb," said Gotrek. "Just hold on."

He took the rope from Kagrin and pulled it in gently, hand over hand. Thorgig slid up the ice in little jerks and starts, his axe dragging behind him, until Gotrek had pulled him to the snowline. Kagrin took his friend's hand and helped him to his feet. Thorgig's face was set and emotionless, but he was white, and his hands shook.

"Thank you Slayer," he said. "Thank you, cousin." He turned to Felix and inclined his head, "And thank you, human. I saw what you did. You saved my life and the life of my friend. I owe you a great debt."

Felix shrugged, embarrassed. "Forget it."

"You can be sure that I will not."

"Slayer," said Druric. "We should throw the bodies over the edge, and all the bloody snow with them. There may be another patrol, and it would be best if they didn't learn what became of the first."

"Aye," said Gotrek, nodding. "Carry on."

While the others pushed and rolled the orcs off the edge, and scooped the stained snow after them, Druric, who carried a field kit, dressed and bound Leatherbeard's wound, and wrapped Felix's swollen ankle in bandages.

"Not broken, I think," he said.

"It may still kill me," said Felix, thinking of the descent back down the mountain.

Sketti laughed as Felix forced his foot painfully back into his boot. "Now maybe you'll slow down and walk at a proper dwarfish pace."

"And maybe if I hung you by the neck you'd grow to a proper human height," returned Felix.

Sketti blustered and reached for his axe.

Gotrek gave him a look. "Never get into a war of words with a poet, Ironbreaker. You can't win."

When all the evidence had been pitched off the cliff and the dwarfs had bandaged their wounds, they set off once again up the saddle-shaped slope of snow and down through the rocky pass.

"There," said Matrak, after another half hour of winding around the crags and cliffs of Karaz Hirn. "There is Birrisson's door, that once led to the gyrocopter landing further up." He pointed to an unremarkable stretch of black granite that looked to Felix no different from the rest of the mountainside.

Druric studied the ground as they paused before it. He shook his head, frustrated. "The ground is too hard, and there is no snow here. I cannot tell if the grobi have used this door." He sniffed. "They have left no spoor nearby."

"Where else would they have been going?" asked Narin.

"Circling back all the way to the entrance?" suggested Sketti.

"There isn't much of a path that way," said old Matrak. "No path at all."

"If they do use this door," said Thorgig, "does it change our course? We must go in even if it is defended. Prince Hamnir depends on us."

"It is likely not well defended even if it is used," said Narin. "They can't expect an attack from this quarter."

"Open it and we will see," said Gotrek.

Matrak stepped forwards, but then hesitated, staring blankly at the wall.

"Don't tell me we've come all this way to have you tell us you've forgotten how to get in," said Narin. He took tinder from his pack and lit his tin lamp. The others followed his example.

"They know we come. They wait for us," said Matrak. He was shivering. "We will all die."

"Enough of that, you old doomsayer," said Sketti angrily. "Open the door!"

As the dwarfs lit their lamps, Matrak nodded and did something at the cliff face that Felix couldn't see. He stepped back. The dwarfs went on guard. Felix drew his sword. At first it seemed that nothing happened. Then Felix frowned and shook his head, assaulted by vertigo. His eyes fought to focus. He felt as if he was sliding backwards, though his feet weren't moving. No, it was the cliff-face getting further away! A tall, square section of it was sinking into the surface of the mountain. Felix strained his ears, but could hear no sound of gears or grinding.

After a moment, the square of rock stopped, about fifteen paces into the mountain, revealing the edges of a dark, cut-stone chamber. When a horde of orcs didn't charge out of the door and attack them, the dwarfs started forwards.

"Hold!" said Matrak. "There is a trap." He squatted at the groove in the floor, which the sliding door travelled in, and reached down into it. After a moment of fumbling, there was a clunk that Felix felt more than heard, and Matrak stood.

"Now it is safe," he said.

It didn't feel safe. Though Felix saw nothing particularly alarming, as he and Gotrek and the others stepped warily through the door, he could not shake the feeling that something wasn't right. His back tingled, and he kept looking over his shoulder, thinking he would find evil eyes glowing in the darkness, but there was nothing there.

Matrak closed the door behind them. On this side, a simple lever operated it. The chamber within was only of a moderate size, by the usual standards of dwarf architecture, with a low arched ceiling, criss-crossed with wooden beams that supported iron pulleys and winches hung with heavy chains. Workbenches, forges and writing desks cluttered the space, and old, half-built machines and contraptions were everywhere. Their shadows moved across the walls of the workshop like the skeletons of strange mechanical beasts as the dwarfs passed among them with their lanterns. A gyrocopter lay dismantled in a corner.

Sketti shook his head as he looked around. "Engineers are mad," he whispered. "All of them."

Matrak led them to a shadowed archway on the far side of the room. Beyond it was a short, narrow corridor that rose, in a series of long, shallow, slightly slanting steps, to a stone door at the far end.

"Be careful," said Matrak, holding up his hand as he stopped before it. "Here is where Birri set all his traps and — " He froze suddenly, and then whimpered softly.

"What is it, now?" asked Thorgig, annoyed.

Matrak stepped back, trembling. "It isn't right. It isn't right," said Matrak. "Smells wrong. All wrong."

The dwarfs lifted their bulbous noses and inhaled. Felix sniffed too, expecting the familiar animal reek of orcs, but could smell nothing. The dwarfs however were frowning.

"Fresh-cut stone," said Kagrin.

"Aye," said Druric. "Not more than a week old."

"The orcs have taken up masonry now?" asked Thorgig.

Kagrin thrust his lantern through the arch, illuminating the corridor, and examined it with a critical eye. "Can't be," he murmured. "It's all straight and true."

Felix scowled. "You can tell how long ago stone has been cut by the smell?"

"Of course," said Sketti. "Men can't?"

Felix shook his head. "None that I know of."

"Yours is a sad, weak race, man," said Sketti, pityingly.

"That rules the world," Felix retorted.

"Only by theft and trickery," said Sketti, his voice rising.

"Quiet!" barked Gotrek. He turned back to Matrak, who was staring into the corridor with wet, frightened eyes. "What does it mean, engineer?"

"They've cut stone. Grobi who cut stone? It..." He moaned. "It can only mean they've changed the traps." He turned to Gotrek. "Valaya protect us all. They knew we were coming! They set new traps!"

Gotrek grabbed him by the front of his chain shirt. "Stop your snivelling, Grimnir curse you!" he rasped. "If something's wrong, fix it!"

"He's lost his spine," sneered Sketti, turning away. "The greenskins stole it from him before he escaped the hold."

"You didn't see!" wailed Matrak. "You don't know! We are doomed!"

"Perhaps there's another explanation," said Narin. "It doesn't have to be cunning grobi. Perhaps the trapped clans have managed to retake some of the hold. Perhaps they have added new defences against the grobi."

"Or maybe the greenskins just walled up the far side of the door, and that's what we smell," said Leather-beard.

"Whatever the case," said Druric, "we'd best go with caution. It would be a grisly joke to be cut to pieces by traps set by those we come to rescue."

Gotrek released Matrak. "Right. Get on, engineer."

Matrak hesitated, staring unhappily into the tunnel. Gotrek glared at him, hefting his axe. The engineer swallowed and at last stepped reluctantly to the arch again, examining every inch of the surrounding floor and wall before finally touching in sequence three square protrusions in the decorative border. Felix heard nothing, but the dwarfs nodded, as if they sensed that the trap had been disarmed. They started forwards.

Matrak held up a hand. "Just to be sure." He took off his pack and dropped it heavily on the flagstones just inside the arch. The dwarfs stepped back, but nothing happened.

Matrak let out a long held breath. "Right." He took two steps into the corridor and froze, peg leg in the air. He backed away and waved to the others to retreat. There is a new nap." He was sweating.

He squatted and examined the floor, running his fingers lightly along the hair-thin seam between two perfectly cut flags, and then looked around at the walls. Something along the moulding on the right side caught his eye and he shook his head.

"Is it dwarf work?" asked Narin.

Matrak chewed his beard. "It can't be anything else, but it's... No dwarf would admit to work this bad." He pointed to a section of the moulding. "Look how poorly it's set."

Felix could see no difference between it and the next, but the other dwarfs nodded.

"Maybe they were rushed," said Thorgig. "Maybe they tried to finish it before the grobi found the passage."

"Even rushed, a dwarf would take more care," Matrak said. "Something's wrong. Something's wrong..." He bent and pressed the new piece of moulding, then let out a breath as he sensed something that Felix couldn't.

"Go on, engineer," said Gotrek, more gently. "Test it and move on. We're late as it is."

Matrak nodded, and tested the new trap with his pack. Nothing happened. He picked it up and inched forwards again, lamp low to the ground. They proceeded in this slow, painstaking way all along the corridor, Matrak disarming traps he knew, finding new ones he didn't, and looking paler and shakier with each. The dwarfs watched his every move, tensing as he searched for the next trap, and relaxing as he disarmed it.

Felix looked around at the walls and ceiling as they progressed, trying to see signs in the stone work of where these traps would spring from, but he could make out nothing. There were no holes or suspicious ornamentation in the shape of axe or hammer. The stone blocks were so well set, and their patterns so regular, that he could not imagine any trap behind them.

While Matrak grew more and more petrified, the other dwarfs grew more at ease, becoming convinced that their brethren inside the hold still lived, and were putting up a spirited defence of reclaimed halls and chambers.

"They're keeping the grobi out," said Sketti Hammerhand, as they neared the end of the corridor. "It's as plain as the nose on your face. There'll be dwarfs on the other side of that door, I'll bet my beard on it. We should stop this pussyfooting and call them to let us in."

"It will be my father," said Thorgig. "He wouldn't sit in his hold doing nothing, waiting for rescue. He would be fighting back, attacking the attackers."

Matrak stopped before the last step. The door was only two strides away. "The final step is the last of the old traps," he said. He reached for a torch sconce in the right-hand wall and pushed on the side of the base with his thumb. It turned, and Matrak breathed a sigh of relief. "There," he said, turning to the others. "Only new ones to find — "